BIZZBY snags $10 mln

BIZZBY has closed $10 million in funding from an unnamed U.S. investment fund. Based in the UK, Bizzby is an on-demand services marketplace.

PRESS RELEASE

On-demand services marketplace BIZZBY has raised $10m from a prominent US investment fund, reaching 35,000 users in its first three months of operation.
Based in Tech City, Shoreditch, the App-based business is promising to revolutionise customers’ engagement with professional services. It believes that its focus on ‘The Now Economy’ sets it apart from other service marketplaces, with instant payment for providers matching instant booking for consumers.
BIZZBY, led by founder and CEO Rohan Sinclair Luvaglio and co-founders Michael Camilleri-Ferrante and Howard Lewis, offers access to instantly available cleaners, plumbers, electricians, handymen, man & van, beauty professionals and others in under 10 seconds. The company’s on-demand, real-time allocation technology matches requests in seconds, with all jobs fully guaranteed by BIZZBY.
At the same time, BIZZBY’s InstantPay™ system pays out to the supply network the moment jobs are completed – the record is 3.3 seconds, against cashflow-unfriendly week or monthly payouts.
Luvaglio, 33, says: “We’re fundamentally changing the way people work. Our technology instantly connects consumers with professional services at the tap of a button.”
Since BIZZBY’s ‘soft’ launch in January 2014 over £1 million of jobs have been placed. Arrival time has averaged 77 minutes and BIZZBY is aiming to reduce it to under 60 minutes. Real-time pricing is provided, so that customers can be certain of what they are paying, with no hidden costs. The professional triggers the start and stop times and customers are charged on a per minute basis – a transparent system with no overcharging.
Trust and quality are paramount so all the service providers are fully vetted, verified by a patent pending process and interviewed in person before being able to provide a service. Strict quality control means that anyone not meeting the BIZZBY customer happiness pledge and high rating requirements is immediately removed from the platform automatically, essentially taking the hard work out of making a choice.
“Most rated systems are flawed and manipulated so by using a combination of real-time data, our clever technology and tight monitoring we can make the best choice at all times. This way we deliver the best professionals that our customers want to use time and time again, where quality and service are top priority.”
Rollout to three further major cities beyond London is currently underway. Longer term, BIZZBY’s JavaScript based, platform-agnostic technology gives the company a fast, scalable and robust foundation to set up in any city or country, once local cultural preferences have been established and supply base secured.
Luvaglio adds:
“The services space is in desperate need of a revolution. Classifieds and directories are dead and searching the internet or classifieds are time consuming. We’ve made it so simple that it’s faster than making a call. This is the future. This is services for the 21st century.”
About BIZZBY
BIZZBY is a fully funded, mobile-first startup changing the way people work by instantly connecting consumers with professional services at the tap of a button. We enable service providers to access thousands of customers without the need to advertise or market themselves, empowering the self-employed and creating a new breed of entrepreneurs.
With over 50k downloads of its app, BIZZBY has experienced 200% growth month-on-month since its January launch.